#1: Tap Into the Wisdom of Your Crowd

Look in your Google Analytics. You might have a surprise if you check the traffic referral section and discover that Pinterest is already driving traffic your way.

If so, then your customers are already indicating this is a platform for you to consider investing your time on. They say the customer is always right, and in this case, you might have a very easy decision to make about joining Pinterest.

As a side note, in October 2011, we went through this process. We had no clue about Pinterest until we saw it pop up as a strong source of referral traffic.

Pinterest's presence in your referral links data is a great sign.

#2: Audit Your Eye Candy

Think creatively about this. It doesn’t have to be a product shot or video. It could be an infographic you’ve had made, a book cover from one of your published works or even an original quote placed onto an image using Photoshop Elements.

The trick here is quality over quantity. To spark a pinning frenzy, you must identify your highest-quality visual content, and then put it within easy reach of Pinterest users.

Put Your Best Content Within Easy Reach

Make your best content pinnable. First add the Pinterest Pin It button to your bookmarks bar, and use it to see how your homepage is currently being treated. (This Pin It button bookmark is how your customers started pinning things for you before you even knew about Pinterest.)

If you’re happy with the results of your Pin It button experiment, great. If not, tweak your site as needed. You want your high-quality content to be as many pixels tall and wide as possible, and have good resolution. I call this process pinnable image optimization (PIO).

The bottom line is that your best stuff needs to be easy to pin from your homepage. It needs to be branded well, visually impressive, and valuable as stand-alone items. This is your first order of business.

Create a unique Pinterest account. When you create your Pinterest account, you’ll want to set up unique pinboards to feature your best visual content. As you pin them into Pinterest, they will be repinned over and over.

#3: Test Your Creative Tensile Strength

Do you already have an ongoing method for creating high-quality visual content? Does the idea of needing to generate this type of content stretch you to your breaking point? Let’s call that a question of your creative tensile strength.

Some small businesses will have it, some won’t.

You’ll need to decide if you can produce a steady stream of really good content. It needs to be niche-specific, and rather than just purely promotional, it needs to help your customers express themselves.

You benefit when you help them display their enthusiasm to their friends.

5 Ideas for Getting High-Quality Content

Re-imagine your product photography from an artistic perspective. Take your standard product shots, but then take pictures that are more creative. Zoom way in, or find a way to (gasp) set a puppy down next to your product and take a nice shot of the dog. Don’t laugh; you’ve entered the new world of visual-trumps-practical. And as Trump himself would say, “Boring pictures. You’re fired.”

Look at the number of repins!

Don’t have physical products? Learn to either create or commission niche-specific infographics. They are all the rage, and if someone on your team cannot make one in Photoshop Elements, then consider shopping around on Fiverr or Elance. You just provide your expertise and let a designer lay it out.

Capture and record. Use Camtasia and record a niche-specific screencast. Upload it to YouTube and then pin it to Pinterest.

Write a post. Start blogging about your niche, and then pin those articles. Make sure you create or find a unique image to accompany each post.

Dig into your archives. Do you have interesting historical content, images, blueprints or artwork that could be photographed? Do you have fantastic blog posts that never had a unique picture embedded? Pinterest is for visual collectors, and if you are the original source of interesting collectible items that can be shared on Pinterest, you could have a goldmine of content on your hands.

#4: Run a Bandwidth Check

Let’s be frank—Facebook and Twitter are labor-intensive. For a one-person shop, the thought of adding another social media burden might be enough to send you over the edge. But don’t worry. There is good news here.

Pinterest is more passively managed than either Facebook or Twitter. Pinterest content has a long shelf life, more like YouTube content. So your contributions are much more valuable, and will provide a longer-term stream of referral traffic. And again, as identified in factor #1, you might already have a fan base building your Pinterest referral links for you.

But even still, someone has got to do the work. So let’s just make this simple. Be honest, do you have the mental and emotional energy or not?

#5: Get a Free Pass if You’re Simply Passionate about Pinterest

Regardless of whether you have any customers pinning, have any initial content to use, have any ongoing source of content or have any personal or organizational bandwidth, you might still be really passionate about what you can do on Pinterest. Maybe you’re an artist stuck in an accounting practice…

In this case, if Pinterest is something you’re passionate about, there is a 100% chance that you can turn that passion into a successful traffic-generating strategy for your small business. It might sound silly, but a passion for visual curation is all you need. You’ll figure everything else out.

The inverse is true as well. You might have customers pinning your content, a nice set of professional items to use as a starting point, a steady supply of high-quality content and the mental and emotional wherewithal to do Pinterest right, but if you’re not passionate about it, then you should stop. Don’t even bother, just agree from here on out that it’s not for you. Pick your best communication platforms and get super-good at using them.

What do you think? I’m interested in what you think about Pinterest, and whether it’s right for your business. Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Jason Miles is the vice president of marketing at Northwest University, and co-founder of Liberty Jane Clothing, a company he founded with his wife in 2008. He blogs at Marketing On Pinterest. Other posts byJason Miles »

This is exactly what I was looking for. Is pinterest worth the time? I have an account and have started using it but didn’t got use to it. I will start investing my time on this one for a good traffic referrer. Thanks.

Jason Miles

Glad it was helpful. If you’re in the right type of business, or just have a passion for it – it can be a massive traffic referral source. For our little business it is the top social media traffic source.

http://www.kayasystems.com/business-process-outsourcing-bpo-services Business Services276

Jason – I’m among those social media marketers who are new to Pinterest and take almost a day to digest social media examiner blog posts. As a matter of fact, I’m in need of short breaks to complete a blog post and then to act accordingly. This is the first post at SME that I read and digested (as I think) in one go. Really impressive and smoothly written blog post! I’m going to try it first for me and then for my clients. 482,000 is a huge number!

Thank you, -Yasir

Ceclauson

Good job Jason! I’m pinning this article, in fact

Jason Miles

Hi Yasir,

I’m glad you enjoyed it. All the best as you launch into it. I know you business will benefit and your clients will be thankful.

Jason Miles

Thank you…Pin Away!

http://www.cljournal.com/ Jan

I started using Pinterest after reading your last article on the subject. At first I didn’t think Pinterest would be right for me as my business is Careers, until I found that people were using it to market their creative CVs! http://pinterest.com/cljournal/cvs/ Now I’ve got quite a few boards and I’m starting to see quite a bit of interest.

Lisa

Good post, Jason.

http://twitter.com/designedbybill Bill Beebe

Nice article Jason. Not sure when you looked at Sherry’s Pinterest page but she has over 800,000 followers now.

Jason Miles

Thanks Lisa, much appreciated!

Jason Miles

Thanks Bill. Yeah, amazing isn’t it. That is a staggering number.

Cathdesjeunes

A acquaintance of mine introduced me to Pinterest a month and half ago and last month, I just went full for force with this medium. I actually prefer it to all the other main social media combined (Facebook, Twitter and Linked-in). I am a visual artist and also a professional organizer, and I am passionate about expressing myself with images – as the saying goes a picture is worth a 1000 words which works just right for me. Although I do write about organizing from time to time, I am really a hands on person, that is where I thrive best. Pinning pictures of organized work spaces and creative organizing solutions are enough as the quality of the pictures are high end, much better than the ones I take with my own camera. The boards I create are a reflection of who I am as person and as a professional, which is a good combination to show to clients. After all, for many people there is still hesitation to a hire someone like me, as people are embarrassed by their clutter especially here in Montreal, where this is still considered a new service/business. I find that Pinterest can make one approachable and interestingly enough, I am inspired to write more when images – “pins” are present. I am going to be working more on that aspect in the coming weeks. I am considering cancelling my Twitter account (definitely the social media on steroids!) which totally stresses me out (even if I am linked to it via Pinterest). Ok that was LONG but I am definitely PASSIONATE about Pinterest !! It’s also a great tool for my art, to inspire new projects as well as being able to show my art, one of my paintings has already been pinned over 40 times… ok back to pinning

Great points. It sounds like you’ve got a perfect combination of skills to really do well in pinterest – the visual art side & the organizational skills & a business to promote. That’s a terrific combination. I think you’re right about making yourself approachable to prospective clients. As Joel Comm says, an important progression is “like me, know me, trust me, pay me”. All the best as you grow your business.

Desk11desk12

Sage advice, time to check analytics. Oh yeah, thanks for the advice on Infographics. I love them.

Thanks for the info on this post! However, I think there are 2 things to consider before emerging into any activity on any social network: 1. Does it’s existing user base fit my brand’s main target audience? 2. Does it’s functionality resides within the type of relevant content I’m generating as a brand.

http://twitter.com/DanykaC Danielle DP

Really good read! I am seriously inundated by social media, however, know that it must be done in house. my team and I are really the only ones who understand our business. I love Pinterest and am currently weaning myself off. It is addictive you know lol It will, however, become a key part of my social networking strategy. Thoughts from anyone are great to share!

Jason, this is a great article and I would like to express how thrilled I am with Pinterest as a no cost promotion venue. I’ve been doing it for about 2 months – and this last week I went from 30 followers to 62. I pin Primitive & Country Decorating photos as I sell home decor & it gets the attention of pinners who like that type of decor – then I have a board for “Favorites from my store” which of course all of my followers see and then they can go right to my store from that — some of those are repinned and with the link to my site on my profile – people can go right to it. I do check my traffic stats and I am getting a few from pins. I love it & I think it’s a nice passive marketing technique – I don’t post a lot of things from my store, but just enough to remind people I have one, so as not to become annoying.

I am loving Pinterest as a way to connect more visually. Recently I had a post pinned 21 times….and I can only see 11 of these who repinned….how Can I see the other repins?

http://LouiseM.com/ Louise Myers

I’m not sold on Pinterest for non-retail business. I’ve been playing with it for several months and will continue to do so, but I spend a lot more time trying to create “pinnable” images for my posts, and figuring out the best time to get repins, than I see ROI. Traffic comes but bounces and leaves quickly. I was excited to see 100+ visits from one pin in one evening, but not so much after seeing the average time on site was 10 seconds!

Jason Miles

You’re welcome. Yeah, good infographics are mesmerizing…and a great marketing tool.

Jason Miles

Good points Adi. So does Pinterest’s existing user base fit your brand’s main target audience? Our business is geared toward moms & daughters, so it clearly fits for us. I’d be interested in hearing you circumstance.

Jason Miles

Thanks Danyka. It is addictive…and look out…once you make it part of your social media strategy – you might be doing a lot more social media work! But that’s good, right?! All the best on your efforts.

Jason Miles

Hi Heather, thanks. Yeah, it sounds like your business is ideal for Pinterest – that’s cool. As a side note about your followers jumping last week. … Last week Pinterest refreshed their followers algorithm – and as a result lots of people saw a nice bump – me included. Sadly some saw a decrease as Pinterest eliminated a lot of spam accounts. Anyway, congrats again about your success with it. All the best.

Jason Miles

Yep. Create a nice graphic or image & add it to your blog posts & start pinning those articles. You’ll find that your blog readers will do it too. There is an audience for your blog articles in Pinterest – you’ll find them.

Jason Miles

I don’t think you can within Pinterest. But if someone knows how, please add a comment. After a certain number of repins, Pinterest will summarize and simply say, “+ 11 more repins” or something like that. You cannot see those. Now, if you want to look into the best pay-for-use analysis tool, (secret tip), look into Curalate.com. It’s got some great functionality to get insights into pins/repins/comments.

Jason Miles

Hi Louise,

You’ve definitely got a problem. But I’d guess that people are indeed interested in your niche, your image, and in the topics those images hint at, because they are clearly clicking through to find out more. So it sounds like Pinterest is doing what it’s built to do. Generate traffic. It makes me wonder what people are seeing when they get to your site. Is it possible your site doesn’t relate to the topic they expected to find? Or is it possible your site’s design doesn’t click with your ideal customers? Without looking further I can only speculate. One thing I do know is that all pins need to be a deep link, not just a link to your primary URL. Link into your site as close as you can to the product, or article, or whatever. Hopefully that makes sense. I hope you continue to experiment to discover how to convert those 10 second visitors into more engaged visitors, and ultimately buyers. All the best.

Very timely for me to read your post. I’ve just read in another blog how Pinterest is fast becoming the social network for companies that sell goods or physical products. And it’s not just pinning and creating boards randomly. Those companies who are successful with Pinterest used it as a storyboard for their products. Your post is a good accompaniment read to learn if a company can benefit from Pinterest.

http://www.kayasystems.com/business-process-outsourcing-bpo-services Business Services276

Thanks for the appreciation. Will get back to you if get any question. Hopefully, you won’t mind answering it. Keep posting.

I didn’t check the pinterest as you have described the way in the article and now I would consider it using as one of my strong channel to drive traffic, I am huge fan of using images and relative video’s on the site but never use or create content like infographic.

Thanks for sharing and pointing out some great tips

Jason Miles

Hi Muhammad,

Great! If you’ve got great images and video, then Pinterest will likely work very well for you. All the best!

Jason Miles

Thanks. Yeah, businesses big and small are figuring out how to use Pinterest. But it’s still early. So if you’re in a competitive space with a big competitor, you have the opportunity to establish an authentic lead over them in this space. That is especially true in Pinterest right now because there is no advertising program that the big companies can use to buy followers. So it’s a level playing field, and small businesses have the opportunity to gain real ground in this space by pure hustle, street smarts, insane investment of hours, and the type of genuine personable treatment that customers love.

Jason Miles

Hi Catherine, unfortunately Pinterest truncates the number of repins after a certain point…by saying, “+11 more repins” or “+220 more repins”, whatever the case may be. But you can’t see who those 11 people are…that I’m aware of anyway.

DCCL

I’m older than most, and haven’t even checked out Pinterest yet. FBook is more than enough, quite frankly, and, due to some info received about FBook recently, I’ll be leaving it very soon. However, I was trying to figure out what to do re our biz if I leave FBook. Seeing your article on Michael’s newsletter has given me a new perspective. Perhaps Pinterest is the option I’ve been hoping for. Q: How long will it take me to familiarize myself with Pinterest? Q: What is the main objective of Pinterest? What makes it different than other social media? Thank you.

http://lighthouseinsights.in/ Prasant Naidu

Jason some amazing thoughts. It’s good that you made it clear that go for it if you have the bandwidth. and there is no point in adopting all networks present in this world just because everyone is on to it. thanks for sharing.

Tracer Bullett

I just spend maybe an extra 5 mins thinking about the pic I choose for my blog post and whether or not its a good fit for Pinterest. I then might add a caption to the pic so I really dont spend that much time and the results have been good…also I found this cool Pinterest Club on YouTube that helps a lot http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zfjc0xmGCjw

I thought that any business should just jump onto Pinterest due to the amount of referral traffic.

Thanks for sharing Jason

Jason Miles

Hi Shane, So yeah, any business can certainly try. But some will have a more difficult time than others. It’s certainly a great source of referral traffic if you can gain traction on the site. Glad I could help.

Jason Miles

Hi Prasant. Thanks! Yeah, I’m definitely a big believer in going deep with a few platforms that really work well with your situation rather than trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

Jason Miles

Hi DCCL, everyone is different, so you’ll have to decide what is right for you, but for our social media strategy efforts Pinterest is on the upswing and FB is on the decline. Here are quick answers. If you’re familiar with Youtube, then your Pinterest learning curve will be relatively fast. At least for me, Pinterest is most like Youtube. Give yourself a few weeks and you’ll be rolling right along. The main objective of Pinterest is for users to ‘curate, (collect), what they love & share it with followers. Of course you want them to love your products. So as a marketer your job is to assist your customers in including your products in their Pinterest collections. Pinterest is different for several interesting reasons. Probably the most interesting is that it’s built to refer it’s users to other websites – not keep users on Pinterest. It is a referral machine in a lot of ways. Glad I could help. Best of luck as you explore what it can do for your business.

http://www.vizzitopia.com Juliet Johnson

I love the way you have explained how pictures go viral, and I think you’re 100% spot on!! The image “needs to help your customers express themselves. You benefit when you help them display their enthusiasm to their friends.”It’s all about the share: They will share your image, if you’ve said what they wish they (or want to have) had said themselves.

THAT is a really insightful point.

DCCL

Thank you so much – I really appreciate your simple/brief Pinterest explanation. Here I go …..

http://jfwhite.org/ James

#3 – the creative tensile strength – is a tough one for a lot of businesses, but its a worthwhile endevour whether they plan to use Pinterest or not. Visuals can bring to life what would would otherwise be stogy, boring companies. One of my favorite organizations on Pinterest is General Electric: http://pinterest.com/generalelectric/ – if you stopped a stranger on the street and showed them some GE pinboards I don’t think they’d ever guess what company was behind them.

I actually just recently wrote a blog post about some of the best brands using Pinterest today: http://jfwhite.org/top-six-questions-to-ask-before-you-start-pinterest/ Definitely very interesting to see the platform evolve and find more business applications.

Jason Miles

My pleasure. All the best on your projects!

Jason

Jason Miles

Hi Juliet,

Much appreciated. Yeah, it’s definitely about helping your customers or followers express their enthusiasm. I love the element of humility in that idea. It’s not about us, or our brand, it’s about the customers life, their enthusiasm for a niche or topic, their need to express themselves.

All the best,

Jason

http://www.marketingscrolls.com/ B2B Marketing Deals

Sure Pinterest is good for good business. Because this social media sites shows good way from which we can grow our business very positive. Thanks

Thank you for that Jason. I am not a Pinterester. It just doesn’t interest me. I’ve been putting off getting into it because I don’t like it. And now I know that I don’t have to. I can focus on FB and LinkedIn and Twitter and be just fine. Right?

Jason Miles

Yeah, happy to help. Be all about the platforms that work for you. All the best.

Jason Miles

I know, right?! But there appears to be more.

Jason Miles

Yeah, B2B is just starting to get exciting on Pinterest. Happy to be of help…

Jason Miles

Thanks James.

http://LouiseM.com/ Louise Myers

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. If this is an aberration, I’ll continue to consider what may be wrong. Perhaps the specific image I’m picking out didn’t appear clear, though the description was, and it was a good article. In general, across my 3 sites, it does seem Pinterest traffic tends to bounce quickly. I don’t believe it’s the design or writing as otherwise the sites do well.

http://www.facebook.com/norbwinslow Norb Winslow

I have used pinterest on my website and the result was great, it jumped from page 6 to #2 in just 3 weeks time.

The key is we must got our website pinned and repinned by many people, which is the toughest part. Most of pinterest users won’t doing repin when they aren’t like what we pinned.

I do simple thing to outsource it on fiverr and got my site pinned by 75 people, I don’t know how can he did it just search by typing pinterest on fiverr and you will find it on the TOP. Many other seller offer pinterest service on fiverr but in my experience they can’t make my website increase in SEO. I don’t know why.

As I know currently pinterest is best for SEO for 4 reasons: 1. Once our website pinned it has 3 backlinks counts. 2. You need to ping the links of your pins to the to get your website increase in SEO. 3. Even not support anchor text (except the url link), it’s still perfect for placing our keywords in description. Google will FIND it!! 4. Obama The President and Mark Zuckerberg now pinning on Pinterest lol.

Jason Miles

Hi Norb,

As a business owner, I focus on using Pinterest to connect with real customers, who actually want to follow our business because of interest in our niche or love for our brand. I want those interested people to share the pin with their circle of friends and followers, and in that way extend my brand’s reach. That’s effective social media marketing using the Pinterest platform.

What you’re describing is gaming the system by using cheap labor in Fiverr to get more repins. That doesn’t align with my approach, nor would I recommend it. I think it’s a waste of time.

If I was going to use Fiverr to help me with my Pinterest work I would use it to find a graphic artist to help create custom images for use in my blog posts. Or maybe an infographic. Or maybe an atistic approach to my product – like a poster promoting my product in a cool retro way.

All the best on your Pinterest efforts.

Jason

http://www.mrchangjinglu.com/ Mrchangjinglu

Exactly what I need. Thank you for sharing!

Jamesjosullivan1

Great article, well explained and very informative. Thank you

http://www.facebook.com/chrislohss Chris Lohss

Jason, great article! I had a hard time finding how to make Pinterest useful for small businesses but this article summed everything up in a clear and concise manner. However, I have some issues when trying to relate my company to the tactics used on Pinterest. I work at a small creative digital marketing agency that focuses on web development, video and production. We also do photo shoots of products. I am trying to seee how Pinterest could be useful to promote web design and how we could promote more of a service than a product, especially one in the field of marketing and advertising. Any suggestions would be wonderful, Thank You.

Thanks James, I’m glad you found it useful. All the best on your efforts.

Jason Miles

Hi Chris,

Good question. Yeah, there is a lot you can do. First, Joel Comm’s classic approach comes to mind: like me, know me, trust me, buy from me. I think in general, whether you’re marketing a product or service, you want to cultivate individuals through that cycle. Present your company as a fun & interesting entity, your employees as experts, and your niche as an exciting category to admire and curate content around.

If your agency is creating videos and graphic content in an ongoing way, then you’ve certainly got the content to pin. It’s probably just a question of how to organize it so that is is of interest to a wide range of prospective clients. I’d think hard about how they might be informed, educated, helped, or even intrigued.

Regardless of whether you are attracting prospects to a product or a service, as you work in Pinterest you are finding people that are 1) self identifying (hand raising) 2) Non-Defensive 3) Sharing their preferences 4) Saying ‘Yes’ to you & your content. Those are phenomenal selling signals. So the effort you put into finding them will likely be very profitable.

I hope this helps a bit. All the best as you work on your Pinterest strategies.

Jason

Robyn

I have tried to add the ‘Pin It” button to my website and for some reason it shows up but the Pin It doesn’t work and suggestions?

Jason Miles

Hi Robyn, this is hard to troubleshoot without seeing exactly what is happening. Let me mention a couple things. First, I’m not a hacker, so there are probably others who could answer better. But in my experience the Pin It tool seems to be hit & miss. Obviously, the Pin It button functionality requires several sections of code to be installed, so you must carefully follow the step-by-step instructions to include both sections of code for there to be any chance of it working. I’ll assume you’re doing that right.

Then you have to realize that the site you’re inserting the code into will respond differently – at least – that has been my experience. For my wordpress.com sites, (hosted by WordPress), the Pin It button has worked sometimes and sometimes it hasn’t. I could never tell if it was human error or some type of site related issue. Or possibly an issue related to the theme I was running. So that has been frustrating to me.

For my wordpress.org, sites (wordpress sites that I have hosted with a hosting company – I use Hostgator), the Pin It tool has worked fine.

I realize this probably isn’t helping you, but if nothing else, we can bond over the common frustration.

I hope you get it figured out. Maybe I’ll do a screencast/blog entry to really do a deep dive into this. It sounds like a good topic.

All the best,

Jason

Jason Miles

Interesting. Well, for my primary ecommerce site it’s 3 minutes 17 seconds per Pinterest visitor over the last month. That is slightly better than my traffic from Facebook and Youtube, but they’re all very close, just over 3 minutes. For my corporate site it is 2:27.

How does Pinterest compare to your other social network traffic – Facebook, Twitter or Youtube? I cannot imagine that it would be much different, but that would be interesting.

I’d imagine every business will be different on this. There will likely be averages within industries or niches, but even in that situation the average time on site will likely vary widely.

This was really informative! A great list of points. Thanks for any insight or guidance you can provide! I find that a lot of people are unsure about how to get started on Pinterest and how to use it for their business. Your post provide a very handy guide.

guest

Pinterest is wonderful for people who are oppressively boring and self interested – they can spend hours ‘discussing’ with themselves the topics they’re obsessed with.. that most of us only want to hear about periodically.

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